The 8th Nerve

The other night was a rough night.  I was up with Emmy the whole night.   She just wanted to nurse ( referred to around here as “hommer noms” a term that evolved from “om nom nom“) it felt like every 20 minutes.  This would be fine if I wasn’t still getting used to it and it feels like she is taking a bread knife to the nipple each time!  I was getting a bit worn down by that, plus she continued to be awake through the morning and early afternoon, with all the bread-knife nursing.

I wanted to get up out of bed, but felt like I couldn’t.  I wanted to eat, but couldn’t (Steve eventually brought up cereal, which I tried to eat with my non-dominant hand at a sideways angle).  I really wanted to sleep, but couldn’t.   I was beginning to get a taste of the stress they talk about when it comes to the first weeks with a newborn.

Later that day I remembered a wrap-style carrier that I had in the nursery closet.  I strapped her in it, and viola, hands free nursing!  I was unloading the dishwasher and she was nursing!  I was sweeping the floor and she was getting her hommer noms!  I could look down as I moved freely about the house and see her contented face looking up at me.  I felt re-energized and free.   The carrier is going to become a staple around here.

Ah, fall is in the air.  The air is cooling down.  I love it.

No Comments »

Aug 26th 2009Emeline

After Emmy was born, we were taken to another floor to stay in the mother baby unit.  Even though I had an hour’s sleep the night before and had just done what felt like the equivalent of five marathons, I was much too fascinated with Emmy to sleep.  I just looked and looked at her, listening to her sighs and other noises that sounded like a little bird or kitten.  I thought newborns just cried, but she had all these other sounds.  I could not stop watching the wide range of facial expressions that would pass over her face in a matter of seconds.

The moments felt so vulnerable, so fleeting.   I found myself racing ahead into the future, making it seem like her existence as a newborn would barely last another minute.  Soon she would be walking, talking, moving away from us, leaving us.  Not only was it fleeting, but all kinds of horrible things could happen, she seemed too fragile for something bad to not happen.  I soon realized this was my mind’s way of trying to cope with the anxiety of already loving her this much.   I was trying to distance myself from the full impact, from the moment itself.

We went home on Sunday the 16th.  It was surprisingly emotional to leave the hospital and the layer of protection they provided.   How surreal that they let this baby go home with us.   Two of us arrived at the hospital and now we were leaving with another human being.

I suppose the emotions hit their peak when I went into the pharmacy and was wandering around uselessly looking for the tylenol.  I stood at the pharmacy desk to ask where it was,  and it hit me then.  I wanted to burst into tears and shriek WHERE THE FUCK IS THE TYLENOL!!? Of course, I didn’t.  I was my usual calm self.  I found and purchased the tylenol.

My Mom was there when we got home and she had meals for us and the house was clean.   Emmy was home.

What a week it has been since then.  I came down with a fever Wednesday night, went to the ER Thursday evening, where we waited for 11 hours.  They finally admitted me early Friday morning with a case of endometritis (infection in the uterus) and I was there until Sunday.   Steve’s mom stayed with me during the nights (have I mentioned how indispensable moms are?) and Steve was there during the days while Billie went home to take care of Lucky.  Emmy was able to stay with me the whole time.

So on Sunday the 23rd we came home again.  I felt like a whole new being.  Pain free and body feeling near normal.  Still sleep deprived of course! (:

1 Comment »

Aug 25th 2009Emeline & Family

Steve and I are such computer geeks.  Not only did we bring our laptops to the hospital to hop on their wifi during labor, Steve has already set up a baby blog and Emmy has her own Facebook account.  We can’t help ourselves!

We named her Emeline Skye.  Emeline was my grandmother’s middle name (and also HER grandmother’s first name).   Skye comes from the Isle of Skye in Scotland, where Steve and I had an amazing trip during the first year of our relationship.

Childbirth was the most incredible, excruciating, humbling and surreal experience of my life.  I went into labor just a couple hours after posting the latest belly picture on here.  Ironically, I had just finished up every last bit of paperwork at work on that day.   That night, I was wide awake until 3 am, but looking forward to being able to sleep in and go to the beach for the day.

Baby had other plans.  Contractions started not long after I fell asleep.  By 5 am they were strong and convincing enough for me to jump out of bed, thinking “this is it.”   They came every 5-6 minutes but I still convinced that they would stop as soon as I woke Steve up.   They didn’t stop however and when we called, the doctor told us to come in.

Steve was giddy with excitement, honking the horn as we drove past our friends’ house up the road at 6:30 on a beautiful sunny August morning.   I felt very calm, still not quite believing it was really happening.  When we got to the hospital, I was dilated 5 cm.  Excellent, this should be quick!  Thank god I didn’t know what was in store for me.

Contractions continued every 4-5 minutes for the next 16 hours, becoming more and more intense as time passed.   I watched the second hand on the clock, I visualized a dial to turn down the pain levels, I visualized water rushing in and out, lake scenes, garden scenes.  I concentrated on breathing.  I fell asleep in the four minutes in between contractions.  I got the labor shakes and shook violently for minutes at a time.   There was a brief scare when the baby’s heart rate seemed high, but then it went back to normal.  Time passed in a surreal haze.  Time wasn’t really time.

By the 16th hour, we decided to break the water, as it hadn’t broken yet.  Contractions were getting severe at that point, and went up another level when the water broke.  At this point, when I closed my eyes, all I saw was fear.  It hurts too much.  I can’t take it anymore.  If it hurts this much now, what will it be like later?  What will the last part be like?  I can’t do it anymore!! Then another mind blowing contraction would hit and I wasn’t centered anymore.  I had difficulty even believing that a baby was even going to come of this. I began to bring up getting an epidural.   We debated this for a while and I tried getting in the bath again for a while, then standing through contractions while hanging off Steve.

My Mom arrived, pretty much expecting the baby to already be born.   She got to stay, be my support, see her granddaughter be born and also got some great pictures, which was really cool.

By the time the epidural guy arrived, I was fervently hoping the needle would be in before I had to withstand another contraction.   When that epidural hit, there has never been such a marvelous drug, ever.  The pain was gone, but I still felt the pressure of the contractions, which made me feel more connected to the process than I thought I would be with an epidural.  I felt so much better not being blinded by pain and fear anymore.   I had hoped to do it without fear, as in my previous entry, and maybe I would have if I hadn’t been worn down by the hours.  I’m not sure.

By the time I was ready to push, the room was suddenly filled with doctors and nurses.  I was gung ho.  Yay, pushing time.  This felt like a good workout, the best sporting event ever.  I pushed…and pushed… nurses left as their shifts ended and new nurses took over…I pushed…and pushed…for three hours.   “There’s meconium in the fluid,” a nurse said.

“That means a team of people in yellow jackets will come in when the baby is born, just to make sure everything is ok,” the doctor explained to me.  What?  Yellow jackets?  What does that mean?  What could go wrong?  Oh god, what if the baby is not ok?

“Three hours is the maximum pushing time,” the doctor said.  “You’re getting up there.  We may need to have some come in and give a second opinion.”  The baby was further down but stuck, and the epidural couldn’t do anything about the pain at this part.  The unspoken word hanging in the room was c-section.  I could feel the haze of fear clouding over everything, while I gripped Steve’s hand to keep calm.  Twenty one hours of labor only to get cut open?  Why wasn’t she coming out?  Maybe I’ll be the only woman in history to just NOT GIVE BIRTH, EVER.  The heart monitor thing had to be inserted and screwed on the baby’s head, feeling like another notch in the march toward a potential crisis.

I went into labor around 3:30 am on the 14th and it was now 12:30 am on the 15th.  The specialist had come into the room.  This felt like the death knell.  I lay back, closed my eyes, looked at the cloudy tendrils of fear head on.  This was no time to fuck around and be afraid anymore.  I mustered up every last ounce of strength and courage I had and thought, a mighty roar in my head,  I AM GETTING THIS BABY OUT.  Then I pushed as if my life depended on it.  Emeline Skye was born within minutes.  Suddenly I was looking into her blue, beautiful face and big waxy wrinkled hands waving and she was for real.  It has been a week and I can’t get enough of looking at her.

The others thought the specialist might have done something to make her come out but I’m not sure.  What she did felt similar to what the others did.   What felt different was finding my resolve to overcome the fear.   Wow, is she ever worth it.

No Comments »

Aug 22nd 2009Emeline & pregnancy

It is beginning to feel scandalous to show this much skin on a public forum.   Times Square and the statue of Liberty were just the appetizers!

I’ve had this blog for a number of years.  I wrote an entry here about why I do it and why it is fulfilling, as opposed to being some sort of flagrant egocentric exercise.  When Steve showed me that an RSS feed can be linked to Facebook so that my entries are automatically uploaded into the note section there whenever I write, it seemed like a cool concept.   I still think it is a cool concept, but I also wonder about it potentially being off putting.

Of course, people not interested (and I wouldn’t blame them especially because I’m all about pregnancy blah blah these days) certainly don’t have to read it.   I’m not nuts enough to think my pregnancy is really that important to anyone besides my immediate family, but I do wonder if it being posted to Facebook comes across like I think everyone should be equally fascinated.   Ah, the trials and tribulations of technology.

I have been so busy reading multiple childbirth books that I haven’t even gotten to the infancy care books.  Steve has read a couple of those, so I am expecting him to know what to do when the baby arrives!  Someone has to know how to put a diaper on.  I can’t believe the due date is four days away.  My Mom jumps every time I send her a text message.  This weekend is going to be a scorcher, I would be happy to spend it in the hospital with the AC.

On Monday, a doctor felt up my belly and said that the baby didn’t seem that large- at least not 10 pound large.  His estimation was 7.5 to 8 pounds at nearly 39 weeks.  I was really happy to hear that!   Who knows what the baby really weighs, but having someone contradict the ultrasound was enough to balance it out in my mind and will at least tone down the dreams I’m having where I give birth to a huge baby that starts talking before we even leave the hospital!

Happy weekend everyone.  I’ll be in the lake as much as I can!

No Comments »

Aug 14th 2009Blogging & Pictures & pregnancy

Steve and I have been together over 11 years and for 10 of those years, Steve was terrified, terrified, of babies.   Babbling, drooling babies would reduce this 6′4” man to state of fearful, suspicious discomfort.  When a baby was in the vicinity, he would get a distinct and very nervous look on his face, as if he anticipated that the baby would start to speak in demon tongues and spew pea soup.  He did not want to look at the baby.  He did not want to touch the baby.   If the baby was older than 1 year, he was not only deeply frightened, he was also annoyed.  The baby is making noise!

“Why??”  I asked him.  “Babies are like aliens,” he would say.  “They’re like tiny people but they’re NOT.”  He just didn’t know what to make of them.  I, on the other hand, loved to look at every baby I saw in public and would catch his eye to try to engage him in enjoying the sight of the cute baby.  Each time, I got the stiff posture, the scared eyes, the refusal to share that particular moment with me.  Aliens are not cute!  It’s a disguise!

Even so, I knew without a doubt that he would be a great Dad someday, besides the general fact that he has extraordinary sensitivity and responsiveness to the needs of those he loves.  The patience he had when he coached me on cross country ski trails while I was falling down all over the place and swearing up a storm and ready to break some poles over his head, told me that much.  I saw his rapport and intuitive understanding of our pets  over the years.  When I thought our cat was just being loud and meowy, he knew the difference between her being hungry and needing to change the litter box.  I knew he would have the same innate intuition and communication with our baby someday.

Over the past year, between repeated exposure to children of our friends and adjusting to our decision to get pregnant, he did a complete 360.  He reaches out to hold babies.  He makes faces at them and delights in their responses and mannerisms.  His most common refrain of the pregnancy is “I want her to come out NOW!  I’m tired of waiting!”

Once Steve comes around to something, he does so completely because he acknowledges those fears so fully first thing.  Then he overcomes them to a point where he is without doubts.  While I still grapple with some anxiety and fears about the unknown, he is completely steadfast in his commitment to being a father who loves unconditionally.  She is going to be one lucky baby.

1 Comment »

Aug 11th 2009pregnancy

Early on in my pregnancy, I learned a really remarkable story from my grandmother.  She sent me her copy of Childbirth Without Fear and wrote that she read it while pregnant with her first child (my mother).   Reading the book led to her decision to give birth at a hospital without any drugs.  This was absolutely unheard of, in 1950.  In fact, women were regularly being made unconscious during the process.

She said that the doctors smiled in condescension and patted her on the shoulder when she told them what she wanted.  During her actual labor, she had to repeatedly make the request that she wanted to be fully awake as they kept trying to administer the drugs.   She did it. I absolutely marvel at the thought of a 20 year old having more faith in herself and in a controversial, derided (at the time) book over the intimidating, white coated professionals and a society that believed childbirth was so painful and unnatural that one should be unconscious in order to survive it.

A friend of mine recorded several episodes of Baby Story and we watched them the other night.   It wasn’t long before I was shocked at how fundamentally questionable the medical model approach is toward childbirth and things, at a subconscious level, haven’t necessarily changed a whole lot since 1950.  I could see how the implicit messages within the medical model– “you’re a patient, childbirth is happening TO you, and you need medicine and/or medical care to fix it”– affected the women.

There was no excitement.  There was no peace.  There was no resolve. I know plenty of pain is involved and you’re not going to see a woman looking happy during the whole process.  However, there are opportunities to feel positive and to have a positive outlook through pain.  After all, it is a natural process and this kind of pain does not mean damage or loss.  This is a different kind of pain and it can respond to how you look at it.  There is opportunity to feel things other than fear and dread.

On top of that, the women are all lying on their backs in bed, like passive patients.  Get up!  Move around!  Use gravity!  Find a position that makes you comfortable!  I just couldn’t believe how passive and disempowered all the women were.    Think of childbirth as a sporting event!  You’re in it for the long haul!  You’re going to kick ass!  COME ON!!

Don’t get me started on the docs.  They come in, stand authoritatively at the foot of the bed, tell the women what to do  “I’ve decided…”  “You need to do this..”   “you haven’t had a contraction in two hours, time for a c-section”, etc without welcoming her input or addressing the resistance and fears that are most likely holding up the labor.  Instead of bringing comfort and reassurance to the process they start pushing pitocin and epidurals.  There is minimal connection between doctor and patient and absolutely no recognition whatsoever of the mind-body connection.  In fact, in the majority of the episodes, pitocin is pushed as soon as the woman arrives at the hospital.  Maybe her contractions slowed down because she is in a hospital environment and it’s a little nervewracking!  Give her a minute!

Once they get meds/epidural, the women are completely out of touch with their bodies and the baby.  They lie there on the bed as if floating above their bodies.   Then it seems more often than not, labor stalls and then more intervention is required.

Oh and I have to mention the episode where the doctor tells the woman that, after all the pitocin,  the baby’s head is still above the pelvic region and it’s time for a c-section.  She asks him why?  and he says “the baby is too big.”   So she has the c-section and the baby is FIVE POUNDS!   Maybe I’m missing something here, but that was the most appalling thing ever.  I think the woman really needed reassurance, a confidence booster, and the comforting knowledge that she could take her time.

I did not realize I had such strong convictions or how disempowering it can potentially be in a hospital environment until I watched these episodes.  However, I have heard good things about the hospital I will be going to and I trust my doctor.  She will listen to me.   She tells me Vermont has the lowest c-section rate in the country.   I’m going in there knowing that this is MY process, I will do what I have to do and take the time I need to do it.  I trust my body.  The key is to be as relaxed and as in tune with body and baby as I can be.   It is not something to fear or avoid in whatever way possible.

Of course, I am speaking as someone who has no experience in this yet.  I just have my instincts and my beliefs about this.  Maybe a contraction will hit and I’ll take that giant needle and jam it into my spine myself.   Regardless, there’s no way I’m lying back in that bed and acting like a patient (victim).  Yes, there are times when something could go wrong and medical intervention is required.  That option should always be available.  However, the fact that hospitals, a place for treating injury and disease and ill health, have taken over childbirth, which is none of those things, to this degree is just bizarre.

I know my grandmother’s story will be a source of inspiration and determination for me when I go in.

7 Comments »

Aug 7th 2009pregnancy

So I’m Lance Armstrong and I’m running a race.  I’m gaining on the top competitor and I’m beginning to pass him.  I’m feeling strong and confident, surprising even myself as I realize how well I’m running with no sign of tiredness at all,  and the feeling grows as I put this guy behind me.

Then lo and behold, roving the landscape amongst the trees like a 50 story Godzilla, is Thomas Jefferson!  Not only that, he is completely metallic and gray colored, as if he stepped out of the nickel, grew enormous and began to walk around.

Then the nickel Thomas Jefferson begins to hurl boulders!  I’m dodging the boulders while still running, estimating from the height and angle in the air where they are going to land.  I, Lance Armstrong, am going to win this race no matter what.

When I think about it, I’d have to say that the themes of my dreams over the last several months have been unusually confident.  Lately I will get presented with nightmarish characters, unusually frightening faces, or situations as if the dreaming brain is actively trying to provoke me and I respond with no fear.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream where I could truly run freely.  In many dreams in the past my attempts to run causes the muscles to feel like molasses, usually as I’m being chased, hunted or about to  be overtaken.

This is a good feeling, as if my body and instinctive unconscious mind is saying “hey, I’m not worried, I know I can do it” no matter how much my conscious mind may fret or fear the unknown.   Particularly remarkable given that, in reviewing my whole dreaming life, it has rarely ever been so positive or confident.

3 Comments »

Aug 3rd 2009pregnancy